“… However, even the combined power of the new computers will be no match for IBM’s Blue Gene/L. This worldbeater is able to perform a staggering 280.6 trillion calculations per second. The computer has more than 130,000 processors and is installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. So far, no other supercomputer has broken the 100 teraflops barrier. Although it already tops the rankings of the list of the Top 500 supercomputers on Earth Blue Gene/L still has not reached its maximum performance, thought to be in excess of 367 teraflops.”? – BBC

What I wonder is what these super computers are being used for. I imagine that world leaders have programmed a simulated political landscape and have run scenarios to come up with the thing they should do. We have neural net type computers that can pick hit songs better than humans and programs that can predict the stock market, so why not?? Is the world already being run by computers? For comparison:

“A human brain’s probable processing power is around 100 teraflops, roughly 100 trillion calculations per second, according to Hans Morvec. [Follow up post says: ] human brain is meant to run at 10 pflops.? ibm are devolping blue gene / q that will run at 3 pflops. current blue gene / l runs at 280 tflops. 100 tflops is not anywhere near human brain speed.” – future